Clogged Toilets and Family Connections
What do four kids, two adults, and a dog traveling in an RV across 1,600 miles from Miami, Florida to Montreal, Canada not need any more of?
The answer: Stuff. Things. Call it what you want, we just don’t need more.
As the summer holidays kicked off, my husband David, our four kids and I decided to take on a vacation with a purpose. We rented an RV and spent eight days together, driving across the country.
Why?
Because I wanted my kids to see how little we actually needed to live and be happy.
Six busybodies inside a mobile home meant super tight quarters—one drawer per child, one tiny bathroom, and a tiny nook of a kitchen.
We had our share of ups and downs, including a clogged toilet and broken AC in the dead of summer, but at the end of the day, we were in it together.
While the adventure wasn’t cheap, the investment and time we shared together were priceless.
As we traveled, we drove through Amish country, observing what life looks like without electricity and when you have to churn your own butter. We drove through Gettysburg and saw the civil war battlefields. We toured an original slave house in Savannah. We stopped in Washington, DC to take in the glory of the capital and of course, we managed to fit in a visit to Disney.
Forming Connections
We form our habits in large part based on the connections we have, on the people we choose to be around every day and how we relate with them.
Living as a family of six inside a mobile home for eight days reminded all of us what it means to truly connect, and more so, how badly we need that quality time (so much more than we imagined).
While we know firsthand how easy it is to get caught up in the frenzy of consumerism, what the human brain is actually hard-wired to seek out is connection.
Brené Brown, Professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work, specializes in social connection. Here’s an excerpt from an interview she did with Emma Seppälä, Ph.D.:
“A deep sense of love and belonging is an irresistible need of all people. We are biologically, cognitively, physically, and spiritually wired to love, to be loved, and to belong. When those needs are not met, we don’t function as we were meant to. We break. We fall apart. We numb. We ache. We hurt others. We get sick.”
In her Psychology Today article titled “Connect to Thrive: Social connection improves health, well-being, and longevity,” Emma further elaborates on this topic:
“We are profoundly social creatures. We may think we want money, power, fame, beauty, eternal youth or a new car, but at the root of most of these desires is a need to belong, to be accepted, to connect with others, to be loved… We pride ourselves on our independence, on pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps, having a successful career, and, above all, on not depending on anyone. But, as psychologists from Maslow to Baumeister have repeatedly stressed, the truth of the matter is that a sense of social connection is one of our fundamental human needs.” 1
The Assumption on Consumption
The broad assumption we’ve long made is that if we accumulate enough “stuff” with which to impress people, we’re less likely to feel rejected by those peers and more likely to be accepted within our desired social sphere.
In other words, we believe that stuff equals acceptance.
As a result, we allow the way people view us to largely determine how we think, feel, and act.
It’s easy to get swept up in societal conditioning and believe that we need nice cars, luxury items, fancy vacations, and share it all in Insta-worthy pictures (with the best filter, of course). This, we believe, will bring us the happiness and fulfillment we seek.
This widespread belief that happiness correlates to wealth is… not entirely accurate.
While we do need our basic physical needs met, research has found that $75,000/year is a threshold income beyond which more money doesn’t buy more happiness. 2
When we allow the bottomless pit of consumerism to lead our lives, we can easily fall prey to thinking that we need that new handbag or shoes or car when what we really want is connection.
Reframe your View
So what’s the answer? Be attentive to what we really need to be happy.
A 2017 study by the University of San Francisco’s Matthew Monnot found that “…Autonomy, developing a skill set to be good at what you do, being affiliative with others, having a sense of connection to your community—these are all things that we as researchers are fairly convinced are innate, evolved human tendencies that bring happiness.” 3
We all want to be loved. We all want to connect.
From our eight days in an RV, I can tell you that real connection can be formed over fixing a clogged toilet so much more than over a four-figure handbag.
This isn’t to say that we can’t enjoy the finer items in life, but think about how much more we would enjoy them if we weren’t in any way relying on them for personal fulfillment or social status. We’d actually enjoy the items more, not less. We’d buy things we genuinely like and want, not just what society tells us is valuable. We’d buy things solely for our own enjoyment.
How, then, do we teach ourselves and our children to value the things that are important and give themselves permission to enjoy material things without being defined by them?
We find ways to connect with others.
Here are a couple of simple strategies to build connections with others:
Reach out
Ask questions and learn
Talk about real life
Take on challenges together
Fix a clogged toilet :)
These are the things that will define you and your connections for the better…and you don’t need to fit your family of six in an RV for eight days to discover their value.
